Help Us Help Farmers: Support Wheat Research

Posted November 1, 2018

As you are making your end of the year tax plans, we ask you to consider making a tax-deductible donation of cash to the Kansas Wheat Commission Research Foundation to further wheat research efforts at the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center. Or better yet, how about donating an acre of wheat, or a truckload of wheat, to the KWCRF?

All donations are used to further the mission of Kansas State University’s wheat breeding program, ensuring that Kansas farmers have access to the best possible wheat varieties and that scientists can leverage human, financial and laboratory resources to make significant improvements to wheat genetics.

The Kansas Wheat Commission Research Foundation differs from the wheat checkoff. The checkoff does fund wheat research, but it also is used for marketing, promotion and education. Donations to the Kansas Wheat Commission Research Foundation will be used only for wheat research.

The end of the year is a great time to donate wheat to the KWC Research Foundation. For many cash basis farmers, significant tax savings can be achieved by donating crops grown directly to a charitable organization. Cash charitable contributions are deductible only as an itemized deduction from adjusted gross income which results in reducing federal income tax only. By contributing crops to a charitable organization a farmer can avoid including the sale of the cash crop in income and can still deduct the cost of growing the crop, which results in saving self-employment tax, federal income tax and state income tax.

A farmer can give a grain “donation” by giving up ownership of the grain. A gift should be made from unsold crop inventory, with no prior sale commitment made prior to the gift. A farmer will gift the grain to the charitable organization and let them decide what to do with it and when to sell it. A letter to the charitable organization summarizing the source of the gift from the farmer and an acknowledgement of the gift by the charitable organization should be kept on file. This may be needed to serve as a substitute for a sales receipt in the yield verification process at FSA offices (and crop insurance) on the quantity of gifted grain, since the grain sales documents would not be in the name of the farmer, but rather in the name of the charitable organization.

Depending upon the size of your gift, a number of donor recognition opportunities exist. All will be displayed in the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center, so that you, your children and grandchildren will see that your gift played a major role in shaping the bright future of Kansas wheat production.

The Kansas Wheat Commission Research Foundation was established in 2011 as the official research fundraising organization for the Kansas Wheat Commission. It is a separate, independent entity chartered by the state of Kansas as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research corporation. Gifts made to the Research Foundation are used solely for the purpose of funding wheat research. Gifts to the foundation are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. A volunteer board governs the Foundation.